Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE), commonly known as Gokhale Institute, is one of the oldest research and training institutes in economics in India. History The institute was founded on 6 June 1930 by R. R. Kale as a centre for research and higher learning in economics. The institute was founded with an endowment offered to the Servants of India Society by Shri R R Kale. The Servants of India Society, a registered body founded by the nationalist leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale, are the trustees of the institute. The institute is registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950. The institute was set up with an objective to conduct research on the economic and political problems of India and to train research workers in these disciplines. D. R. Gadgil was the first director of the institute. It was named a deemed university in 1993. Research The major research areas of the institute, developed over the years through financial assistance from various sources, are agricultural economics, population studies, economic history, input–output analysis for planning and development, microeconomics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, financial economics, public economics, international economics and the study of economics of East European countries. In the early years, the research activities were financed through assistance from various ministries and public funding agencies including the government of Maharashtra and private foundations like the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. In 1954, the Union Ministry of Food and Agriculture established the Agro-Economic Research Centre of the institute. During the early fifties, the Rockefeller Foundation made a substantial grant, spread over years, for the conduct of a research programme in rural demography. The Union Ministry of Health also gave grants for conducting some specific demographic studies in 1954–57; and in 1964, the ministry decided to strengthen and expand the research work on population by financing on a continuing basis a Population Research Centre as an integral part of the institute. Ford Foundation gave a very generous financial assistance for more than a decade beginning with the year 1956. Later on, the Ford Foundation, in co-operation with the Planning Commission, provided a separate grant for research and training in the areas of planning and development, mainly devoted to input–output studies. In 1962, the University Grants Commission (UGC) recognised the institute as a Centre of Advanced Study in Agricultural Economics to start with and later, in 1964, as a Centre